


oasis of light

by cheloniidae



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Pre-War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-06
Updated: 2017-02-06
Packaged: 2018-09-22 08:47:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9597824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cheloniidae/pseuds/cheloniidae
Summary: A late night's work before the war.(Instead of a family, Robert House has a city.)





	

On Robert House’s terminal, Las Vegas dies again and again.

He has never hated numbers — always found comfort in their objectivity, their crystalline certainty — but as he reads the results on the screen, he might have to start. His program for brute-forcing disarm codes isn’t fast enough. At this rate, incoming missiles will be disarmed a half-second after impact.

For weeks, he’s combed through the program, fine-tuning the assembly code instruction by instruction, eking out every cycle of performance he can. The time has gone down from ten seconds after impact to five to a half, but it might as well be ten years for all the difference it makes. Too late is too late is too late. The end result is still the same: failure. His city in ashes.

Whenever he closes his eyes, he sees its destruction. A warhead striking Fremont Street, obliterating everything within a mile radius, blinding and burning those whom it doesn’t instantly kill. Smoke and screams both rising from the collapsed ruins of casinos; the city’s radiance extinguished in one final burst of light. And seventy-six more warheads following its trail, aimed right at Vegas, his shining Vegas—

He jolts awake in his chair, the images clinging to him like cobwebs, and looks out the penthouse windows at his city: a glimmering oasis in a dark desert. Neon washes out the stars in the sky; the people bustling below are nothing more than specks, cars nothing more than distant headlights. The city never stops moving, breathing, ticking.

Under his watch, not even the war to end wars will change that.

Another sip from the night’s fifth cup of coffee, and he scrolls through the assembly yet again, searching for any inefficiencies he may have missed. It seems impossible to optimize the subroutine further— but that was what others said about manufacturing transistors at commercial scale, about creating room-temperature superconductors, and Robert proved them wrong. There must be some way that he just isn’t seeing. There must be.

The chorus of aches in his back, his neck, his shoulders, reminds him he’s too old to be staying up for days on end typing away at a terminal. Fifty has come and gone, leaving gray in his hair and wrinkles on his face. He’d planned to step away from the company, to make time for—

But those old plans are distractions he can't afford. His future belongs to Vegas and humankind, now. (The life support chamber is waiting for him in the Lucky 38’s basement, nearly complete. And if he shudders at the price of immortality, at the schematics and procedures of his own design, no one is witness to it.)

 _There._ He leans forward, ignoring his protesting muscles, and re-reads a piece of code. It had been optimal on the _old_ system, but with the mainframe’s new processor design… He types in the changes, checks them, checks them a second time.

A few commands, and the simulation is running again. Were he a religious man, he would pray; were he a gambling man, he would wish for luck. But he’s neither of those, and so he simply waits for the results, forcing his hands to relax at his sides.

A tenth of a second after impact. Improved, but not enough.

Never enough.

He doesn’t have to do this, he thinks. With the resources at his disposal, he could lose himself in a VR simulation for eternity, or join the Enclave off-planet. He could stop; he could leave Vegas behind.

Even as he thinks it, he knows it's a lie. (They call him _Las Vegas' greatest son_ ; one of every eight citizens is on his payroll; the city's rhythm is more familiar than his own heartbeat.) He sighs, rolls his aching shoulders, and switches to a new section of the brute-force program. One step closer to success; a handful of hours closer to doomsday. It's a race against time, one he can't afford to lose.

Robert is fifty-three years old, and instead of a family to protect, he has a city.


End file.
